Compass Group
World's largest contract foodservice operator achieving £42 billion revenue through outsourcing trends and 96.4% client retention.
Compass Group posted £42 billion annual revenue in 2024 with 10.6% organic growth globally and 10.5% in the US. This is not a restaurant business—it's resource allocation as a service. Compass runs cafeterias in offices, hospitals, universities, sports venues, prisons, and offshore oil platforms. The value proposition is simple: organizations that aren't foodservice experts outsource the function to one that is, gaining economies of scale they couldn't achieve alone.
Client retention of 96.4% reveals the stickiness. Once Compass integrates with a hospital's scheduling system, learns employee preferences, and trains staff in the facility's protocols, switching costs become prohibitive. This is mutualism with lock-in: clients get reliable meals without managing the complexity, Compass gets long-term contracts with predictable cash flows. First-time outsourcers are the growth driver—companies that previously ran in-house cafeterias finally acknowledge that foodservice is not their core competency.
The business model shows metabolic efficiency through scale. Compass serves 580,000+ meals daily using centralized procurement (bulk purchasing), standardized training, and shared back-office functions. A hospital in Texas and a university in Scotland both benefit from Compass's global supplier relationships, food safety protocols, and menu innovation. This is the advantage of being the mycelium: distributed presence with centralized intelligence.
Sector diversification creates portfolio stability. Business & Industry and Sports & Leisure drove US growth in 2024, but Healthcare and Education also showed high growth rates as spending and attendance increased at education sites. The 2024 acquisition of CH&CO (UK competitor) and 2025 acquisition of Vermaat (Dutch caterer for £1.3 billion) demonstrate consolidation strategy—buying regional leaders to gain local expertise and client relationships.
2025 guidance expects high single-digit operating profit growth on 7.5%+ organic revenue growth. All three major contract foodservice companies (Compass, Sodexo, Aramark) forecast 6-11% organic revenue growth, signaling robust outsourcing trends. The pandemic accelerated this by forcing organizations to question whether running in-house foodservice makes sense when external specialists can handle it more efficiently. Compass captures value by being the largest: each new client strengthens the network, each contract provides data to optimize operations, each acquisition adds capabilities that attract more clients.